


the love song of chalk-body outlines

by mazzo



Category: Naruto
Genre: M/M, uhh gaara is mentally ill and i love him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-26
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-08-27 01:54:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8383366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mazzo/pseuds/mazzo
Summary: When Gaara first encounters Naruto, he sees only a boy with dirt under his nails and blood on his lip and a swing all to himself.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ravebot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravebot/gifts).



On Sunday afternoons, Gaara can be found staring out of his child-locked window, leaning on his toes, praying to the sun to keep him alive; asking her to stay just a little longer. His father knows this and lets himself into his room without a greeting, only a gesture to come along.

Gaara, for now, six years old and vulnerable, never hesitates to do what he is told.

They are going to _Konohagakure_ \-- or so he gathers from the chatter his father has with counsel in the halls of the Kazekage office building. It will only be Gaara and his father on this trip, because their village is desolate enough as it is and they cannot afford to send a band of shinobi to escort their Kazekage for over a week. And besides, what else do you need when your son is a volcano?

“Open and scorching and impulsive.”

Gaara, for now, pretends this is how his father means to say “I love you.”

When Gaara and his father arrive in Konohagakure, Gaara is truly surprised by how many people are out and about and how everything is so green, green, green. What he finds to be most incredulous is that when he and his father walk through the village, people do not scatter like a flock of sheep and he is the slaughter. People do not exhale personal revenge from their lungs.

Here, Gaara thinks, no one knows me.

Rasa tells Gaara to wait outside while he makes business inside with an old man (who’s got a hat like his father’s and a smile that makes him feel funny) which does not bother Gaara.  Waiting _inside_ is terribly dysphoric; don’t touch anything, don’t look at anybody, you’re just a housefly and they’ll sweep you under the rug. At least outside, the air can be his.

He lets himself wander around nearby and take in the sights in a spur-of-the-moment cure for boredom. The air is cool and fresh here and the buildings are nicer, with more opened windows and less stucco. Everyone here is different than back home, Gaara can tell. One woman with a baby even smiles at him.

When Gaara first encounters Naruto, he sees only a boy with dirt under his nails and blood on his lip and a swing all to himself. He is breaking apart old cigarettes and the skin around his nails. Gaara cannot help himself; he thinks, maybe his father makes him wait outside, too.

Gaara looks back over his shoulder. Father will be having a business meeting, and business meetings are always very boring and very _long_.

Here, Gaara dares, resides possibility.

Carefully, he approaches the boy from behind and tries to contain his excitement. But the closer he gets, the smaller he feels. He swallows. He can be brave.

“Hi,” Gaara greets cordially — or tries. No matter how often he practices being congenial and graceful, nothing can stop the way his hands shake and the creatures catch the words in his throat.

The boy jumps in surprise and turns to Gaara, hands up, ready to defend himself. Like everyone else, he looks very different than the children in his own village, Gaara notices. He looks… “What do you want?” the boy asks.

Kind. “Do you want to play?” Gaara offers.

“Play? Play what?” The boy is squinting at him. Warm.

“I don’t know.” He shuffles his feet and looks away. “I’ve never played a game before,” Gaara admits, shamefully and honestly.

The boy shrugs. He has bruises on his chin. “Me neither.”

Gaara feels a fervent mirth settle in his chest. This is possibility.

As the clouds roll south and the sun drains out, Gaara and his momentary acquaintance do a whole lot of nothing. Together, they draw in the dirt with sticks and climb trees and take turns pushing one another on the swing. This boy talks a lot, and Gaara has never known someone to want to share so many words with him. He talks about the building across the way, his school,  and how stupid it is, and about the way villagers turn their noses up at him.

“They think they’re so cool,” he bites. “I think they’re stupid.” He kicks his legs up hard after Gaara pushes him on the swing.

“Why do they do that?” Gaara is curious.

The boy shrugs. “Who cares?”

Gaara blinks and misses the boy when the swing comes back down. They crash and tumble over backwards, and Gaara ends up on top of him.

“I’m sorry!” Gaara blurts out and pushes himself up, but the boy throws his head back and _laughs_.

“It’s okay, you didn’t mean to,” he says. He is laughing and makes no move to shove Gaara off of him. He is _laughing_. “And we’re friends, so it’s okay!”

Gaara feels his stomach churn and cave in. This feels wrong, inappropriate, not allowed. His head is spinning and he feels out of this world, like you could pull him apart at the elbows and his skin would slip right off. His knees shakes. His eyes burn. He should have listened to his father. He should have stayed put and behaved.

“Yes. Friends.”

The boy gives him an all-tooth grin. Gaara fidgets with his fingers. He does not know what to say next, but it doesn’t matter because his friend leans over and says, “Hey, don’t look, but I think that guy’s staring at us.”

Gaara turns and looks anyways, and sees his father.

“I think he wants to fight!”

Gaara doesn’t waste a second scrambling up off of the ground. “I have to go.”

“Wait, where are you going?”

“I have to go —”

“When are you coming back?”

“I —”

Before he knows it, Rasa is grabbing Gaara by the arm and tugging him forward. He is silent; his body language and the grip on Gaara’s wrist is connotation enough for what he means to tell his son. Gaara’s friend stands up and balls up his little fists, but Gaara doesn’t look back. He feels humiliated and guilty. He should have behaved, he knows. Who did he think he was, approaching unsuspecting children in strange places?

Rasa works his nails into the soft of Gaara’s wrist: a reminder not to embarrass him. A reminder that there is nothing here for him, or anywhere. He is predestined.

“My name is Naruto!” the boy calls after him. Gaara looks back, and Naruto is waving at him. Naruto is smiling at him. “I’ll see you later!”

Gaara isn’t fool enough to wave back and he hopes Naruto can understand. Afterall, his father makes him wait outside, too.

On their way home, Rasa does not ask his son who he was playing with. Gaara is shown how it feels to swallow teeth instead. Teeth, gunpowder, and wolf’s bane. He will keep everything of the world in his stomach until he can breathe again.

 

 _Naruto, Naruto, Naruto_. A song Gaara finds himself dreaming of when he can’t sleep.

 

* * *

 

Gaara’s late mother’s brother attempts to kill him in a bombing murder-suicide. He loses his deep desire to be loved and to be trusted in the explosion and falls into a riot of self-perpetuated emotional violence. His dreams shatter in a wail of abject loathing. Nothing makes sense.

 

* * *

 

When Gaara is twelve, Sunagakure, amongst others, will be invading Konohagakure. This will be the second time Gaara has ever visited the Hidden Leaf Village, and the first time since he met Naruto. He is anxious, though this is something he will never admit to even himself. In a village as large as the Hidden Leaf, he does not see himself meeting his old friend.

Gaara definitely does not expect his older brother to find him first. He does not know how to say hello to his old friend; Gaara has not had any positive interactions with anyone in a very long time. This feels like redemption. Perhaps Naruto has been anticipating this moment as well.

But Naruto does not react to him. Gaara feels misplaced. He feels embarrassed. With this much desperation for finding salvation in companionship and love, memories distort. Probably, Gaara was disposable to Naruto, while Gaara regarded Naruto as something special. Perhaps their encounter was only a dream. The maggots under his skin grow anxious, creeping and crawling and laughing at him, the repentant child. He should know by now there is nothing here for him.

Gaara feels like he’s swallowed the cloudy sky.

“Hey! What about me?” Naruto boasts.

The sludge of the world is in his stomach.

“Don’t you wanna know my name?”

I will keep it, Gaara thinks.

“I’m not interested.”

He is fed by it. The dirt and the bones and the worms in the dirt. Mud, flowers, ice, hell, birds, glass, magic, blood, and teeth.

Here, Gaara knows, is not for me.

 

* * *

  

Somewhere along the way, Gaara succumbs to the beast and goes on a rampage, and Naruto smacks him in the head with his own head. It hurts and feels good all at once. Gaara learns that Naruto’s father never leaves him to wait outside because his father has been dead since he was alive. Gaara learns that loss and absence in different lenses can prove different results. He returns home with a heavy heart and a chance. Nothing ever makes sense.

 

* * *

 

Growth comes unintentionally. Naruto’s influence on him has left him wanting to be more. Loving himself, distinguishing love, and finding love are things he is not sure he will ever find himself becoming acquainted with. He has now, though, reminders that he doesn’t need to overcome that. Gaara finds reminders in the way his brother talks kindly about him when he is and is not there, and in the way his sister says his name as if she does not know that he is the Kazekage. For now, everything is where it should be and change comes in slow motion.

Most of the time, Gaara feels he deserves the scraps under the table and not much else. Naruto is encouraging and patient with him at the same time. Sometimes, Naruto will stop by and bring him snacks he forgets himself are his favourite. Sometimes, Gaara does not feel so ashamed when he thinks of his mother because Naruto swears everything happens for a reason.

Most of the time, time feels dead and Gaara is missing Naruto.

But today, it’s Monday morning. The sun is bleeding into puddles on Gaara’s desk and Naruto’s got a distracting summer-lantern smile. Since last Wednesday, Naruto has been staying in Sunagakure for no reason in particular and Gaara has been suspicious all the while. He figures he was reasonably so when Naruto lingers in the doorway of the Kazekage office and makes odd small talk with Kankuro for almost ten minutes.

Gaara sits back. Naruto and Kankuro look so much different standing next to each other than back then. He feels warm.

(He wonders when this started.)

“Do you need something, Naruto?” Gaara asks him.

“Hey,” he says, as if he had just arrived. “I gotta ask you something.”

“Okay.”

Naruto tries to close the door behind him, but Kankuro puts his hand up to stop it. “The Kazekage said it’s cool, dude,” Naruto reminds him. “Beat it.”

“I’m kicking your ass when you get out of there,” Kankuro bites, smirking. Naruto sticks his tongue out at him and closes the door. Gaara waits for him to pull a chair up real close to his desk.

“This might be kind of out of nowhere to you.” Naruto leans forward and asks, “Do you like someone?”

Suddenly, they are six again, hands buried in the soil and grass in between toes under the swing that all of the other children were too afraid to use because the chains were contagious. Gaara knows what he means. “Curiosity killed the cat, Naruto.”

“And the cat will have eight more chances!” Naruto grins. “Who do you like? Who is it?”

Gaara finds anything else to look at — the hangnails on his thumbs, the sunspots on Naruto’s jacket zipper  —  and imagines how he can say Naruto’s name without stuttering.

Naruto blushes and runs his fingers through his hair, and he smiles at Gaara like this is what was supposed to happen. Perhaps the haggard hands that pressed against his small, hollow chest as a child and yanked the two stuffed canaries perched on his sternum right out did so to make room for possibility in a boy with dirt under his nails and the itch to become.

He knows this cannot be true. Abuse is not romantic. But it helps Gaara cope. With his own small, bashful grin, Gaara hopes Naruto can understand.

(These things have no start because they cannot finish.)

Gaara spent his life growing up on the fast lane and his tank went empty on the highway to Heaven. He grew up too fast and not at all all at once. Naruto found him on his own way home.

 

Nothing ever needs to make sense. This is how he can begin.

 

**Author's Note:**

> was this basically just a vague re-narration of gaara canonically being mentally ill and in love with naruto? yeah


End file.
